Latest 5-Star Review of The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder

I'm listening to the Reds game while I write this. I just had to turn down the sound on another cancer commercial. Ask yourself what they're selling in those commercials and realize that healthcare providers, like all corporations, are actively about the business of expanding their markets. Think about that and you will turn down the sound on all such commercials too. That's the topic of my next book, the current working title of which is The Obamacare Experiments.

In the meantime, I have this other book out there called The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder, and my friend and colleague, Thomas Cothran, has been so kind as to post a review on Amazon. While Thomas gave the book five starts, in the review he also says of what you might call its philosophical argument:

"I'll let the reader make their own decision about the merits of this worldview. (The enemy of this metaphysics is Aristotle.) For my own part, I remain cheerfully Aristotelian.

In other words, The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder in essence lays the responsibility for all the woes of modern society squarely at the feet of Aristotle's rationalism, and young Thomas--who's favorite philosopher is Kierkegaard but doesn't recognize that Kierkegaard was anti-Aristotilian too--remains unconvinced.

Not to worry. I've challenged my good friend to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for himself, a challenge to which he has agreed. We shall see if he remains cheerfully Aristotelian after that.

I'll keep you posted. Thanks, Thomas!

BE Your Body to Ward Off Disease?

Wow. This article is exactly what I'm talking about.

High BMI? What it means for your child, and what you can do about it

Apparently, Michelle Obama needs a doctor to tell her that her kids are getting too fat. I feel sorry for these girls later in life.

Occasionally, I sit with my mom, who is in her 70s, and watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. While I will happily admit to enjoying them from time to time, it's clear from the commercials that these shows know exactly which demographic is watching: old people. Every other ad is for something having to do with bladder control, bowel movements, dentures and all sorts of exotic prescription medication with a list of potential side effects that take up the second half of the thirty second spot, and read at double speed at that.

My mom and I often joke that the announcer ought to just come right out and say it: "If this medicine doesn't kill you, it might just cause your psoriasis to itch a little less."

No Shame in US Bank CEO Helping His Janitor

This story was originally published by Technorati on 5 March 2010. Arthur Delaney, the writer of the story in The Huffington Post to which this article is a response, asked me to include this statement:

"My story is clear that US Bank bought the already-foreclosed property in a sheriff's sale, and that US Bank is the trustee while Chase is the servicer."

To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

The Huffington Post recently reported on the fate of Minneapolis janitor Rosalina Gomez, who as providence would have it, found out that she was cleaning the executive offices of Richard Davis, the CEO of US Bank, the bank that bought her house, which had been foreclosed upon and was sold in a sheriff's sale in September.

Calling Davis the culprit in this story, Huffington's Arthur Delaney's gotten it all wrong.

U.S. Bank didn't send Ms. Gomez's home into foreclosure; U.S. Bank bought her home in foreclosure. That's a big difference. Chase is the bank that held the mortgage and allegedly didn't make it clear enough to Ms. Gomez and her husband that the loan they were getting had a variable interest rate, that would allow their monthly mortgage payment to climb after a period of time.